Senator Spotlight - Chris Coons - Collusion - August 1, 2018

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, filmed the following video after President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the President spent the past several days claiming that “collusion is not a crime.”

“Hi, I'm U.S. Senator Chris Coons from Delaware, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I've recently noticed that Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer, has been publicly saying that collusion isn't illegal, that he can't find it in the code books, and I just wanted to offer my advice.

“What we're talking about here is an ongoing investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, into whether or not Russian nationals, military intelligence staff of the Russian GRU, provided some assistance to the Trump campaign in 2016, and whether or not that form of collusion or cooperation might be illegal.

“So, I took the liberty of looking into the United States Code. In Title 52, Section 30121 it says, ‘It shall be unlawful for a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value in connection with a federal, state, or local election,’ and it goes on to say, ‘or for a person solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described above from a foreign national.’

“It seems pretty clear to me that anything like a treasure trove of thousands of hacked emails, that is a thing of value, being solicited, accepted by an American campaign from Russian nationals would be a clear violation of U.S. Code, and actions to work together with Russian nationals to subvert our code would be illegal collusion.

“My advice to Mr. Giuliani would be, instead of arguing that it isn't illegal, to advise his client to cooperate fully with the Mueller investigation in the hope a